Yeah, from the reader's POV Medium seems a nice deal, I guess from the writer's POV it's more like pulling into another truckstop after a 600 mile day. Ahh, I can already smell the reheated freeze-dried and thawed shrink wrapped food, just add some water, mmm mmm.

As for substack, readers kind of need it for some subject covered by someone they read a lot anyway, for writer's I guess substack does some of the networking benefits plus maybe it's easier to be seen/read, only time will tell though, substack probably has a crowd limit too at some point of substackers saturation.

Substack reminds me of all the one-off contractors in the neighborhood that got tired of being working stiffs in the sense of periodic layoffs, crushingly boring jobs, or the US job picture in general. So the next thing is everybody is a contractor cluttering up the hood with their lawn mowers, tool trucks, service people, and on and on. The old days of steady employment are just gone, it's a cliche but real.